Hello, yes I'll join in! We are selling and buying. And like you are waiting on queries to be answered from the sellers.

Then just this morning we had more queries from our buyers including asking if we will replace the garage roof. I've no idea if this is normal, but we have replied no we won't be. Last week we were told we were two or three week from completing so it feels very late in the day to be asking questions like that.

Yeah, we’ve been waiting seems like forever, the whole process began in December were selling but not buying another property so you’d think it would be nice and simple but Ooooooh no, bloody lenders and solicitors.

We went SSTC and had an offer accepted on the house we are buying in November (and it's a short chain as our vendor is moving into a vacant property, so that's the end of the chain).

Our buyers and their crap solicitor have held the process up for weeks and weeks already (rest of the chain has been waiting ages) whilst they had two mortgage applications turned down, and generally faffed and taken ages to do everything, but we've all waited for them.

We were first told we were 'nearly ready to exchange' nearly 3 weeks ago and were just waiting for buyers to return their contracts with plan to complete on the 27th of March. Fab.

Then buyers solicitor raised loads of random last minute enquiries that they could have asked weeks before. Okay.

Buyers enquiries were answered and contracts were returned. Fab. Plan was to exchange last week.

Oh but apparently the buyers made some mistake with the witness signatures so had to have another set of contracts issued. They assured our EA these would be back by Saturday. They weren't.

Couldn't exchange on Monday therefore as contracts hadn't been received back at buyers solicitors (the dozy gits had put them in the regular post and not sent them next day delivery).

Was told yesterday (Tuesday) that we could exchange if the buyers contracts arrived in the post that morning. Hurrah. It did! But, then their dopey solicitor realised that there was an error in the amount written on our buyers' gifted deposit letter from their grandmother. A letter that it had been with them for literally weeks and weeks and so should have noted this error ages before. So now not possible to exchange until this was corrected.

However because our mortgage company needs 5 days between exchange and completion to release funds the fact we didn't exchange yesterday meant we all had to renegotiate a completion date so there would be 5 working days still between exchange and completion.

So this morning the whole chain agrees to complete the 29th. Buyers solicitor confirms the amendment they need to the gifted deposit letter has been received and all ready to exchange. My solicitor and estate agent both contacted me this morning to say exchange was happening today. Hurrah! So I waited. And waited. And waited. By 4pm I contacted my estate agent to confirm what is happening. Apparently one of the banks in the chain still hasn't given official confirmation that completion on the 29th is okay, and can't exchange until this is received. If I hadn't have contacted my estate agent I probably wouldn't have known as no one contacted me to tell me this.

Estate agent has said that exchange should probably now happen tomorrow.

If it doesn't we will need to re-negotiate the completion date AGAIN to allow 5 working days between exchange and completion, and it means we won't be in by Easter, when I have been saying since early January that we need to complete by Easter because I can't get time off work in April.

sandyday It’s a flat we’re selling and wait for it, selling to the tenants living in it.

Bless them, they’re as stressed as us, so just to confirm we have NO chain and still the solicitors need to ask the most ridiculous questions just to slow the whole thing down, because they have to make it look like they’re earning their fee.

Hopefaithillegality Feel your pain, it was assumed that we would at least exchange end of Feb early March, were now end of March and were still waiting, anyway we live in hope, at the start of every week we say “will we exchange” this week!

@eggsandwich I was so worried my husband and I were your buyers then, as we started in December and are FTB. Also the people we’re buying the house from are moving into rented so it SHOULD have been easy. I breathed a sigh of relief when I read you were selling a flat 😂

Me! It's so stressful. We've had loads of delays caused by our buyers (FTBs) which is getting very tiresome. Hoping to exchange in the next couple of days, should have been last Friday. Found out today that one of them has been in an accident today so that will understandably delay them a bit - she's ok, luckily. Still hopeful for the next few days though.

I'm with you! Waiting on "A couple of enquiries", no idea what they are or what the issue is as all searches / surveys were fine. Sick of blooming solicitors taking forever to do every single thing. Same solicitor as seller and no chain as well.

It's my first home so I'm itching to get in! On the plus side we popped round yesterday to have another nose and got talking / exchanged numbers so anything non-legal we can sort between ourselves. They are just as keen to get it done as us.

I feel your pain! We have had so much experience of delays - nearly always down to useless solicitors. A few years ago we were at the bottom of a nine property chain and nothing had happened for about a month. We spoke to our vendor, told him what we were about to do, and instructed our (excellent) solicitor to contact our vendor's solicitor and say we were going to pull out if we hadn't exchanged by a certain date. The message got passed up the chain and it turned out one of the solicitors was away on holiday and hadn't handed over the case to a colleague while away. And then last year our vendors, who'd not moved house for 30 years and really needed a solicitor who'd hold their hand through the process, chose a lawyer who only worked three days a week and was epically incompetent as well. We estimate that their uselessness meant we completed two months later than we should have done.Conveyancing is such a standard process and it baffles me that so many solicitors firms seem incapable of doing it properly.

Waiting on "A couple of enquiries", no idea what they are or what the issue is as all searches / surveys were fine. Sick of blooming solicitors taking forever to do every single thing.

This with bells on....also waiting on 'a couple of enquiries'...between the waiting and the lack of control, I'm literally itching to pick up the phone to the solicitor!

I've told myself to wait till tomorrow, want to keep on top of things but don't want to hound them...so frustrating tho!

I think it would be so much better if you could have a clear view of exactly what they're waiting on and when so you can see what's happening. The case tracker service is next to useless as it only shows the big stuff, the bits that you already know!

My husband and I have put our mortgage application in for our first home it should be simple as we are buying the house we already live in (it's my brother's house and we were privately renting it anyway)

Unfortunately resi conveyancing is one of those ‘mass market’ areas where the larger firms palm most of the work off to para legal who has hundreds of files to run at once with the odd actual solicitor overseeing a big team of admin staff. It’s all driven by consumer desire for lower fees - a standard solicitor charges out at a couple of hundred an hour at least so if they’re doing all of it the fees are just much too high.

The key is to piss them off by constantly badgering! That way they’ll want to get rid of you.

Oh thank you TeaMeBasil. Sadly it's going badly here today too. Had a call from our solicitors this morning to say apparently the solicitors for the property our vendor is buying (which is the end of the chain as it's vacant - probate sale) is saying they are missing a document (no clarification on what this is) and can't exchange until they receive this. They may get this today or they may not. Given the general speed of things in this process I suspect not.

This missing document is apparently despite the top of the chain saying for weeks they were ready to exchange (there have been a lot of delays with our buyers which have held things up for weeks), and the fact that we have been trying to exchange all week, apparently only now have the solicitors at the top decided to check if they have all the necessary paperwork.

And if we don't exchange today we can't move before Easter (as my mortgage company needs 5 working days between exchange and completion to release funds). And I've been saying since January I need to move by Easter. Utterly hacked off here.

TeaMeBasil - I would honestly say DO keeping chasing the solicitors. I have learnt the really hard way that if you don't keep nagging nothing seems to get done!

I really hope everyone else in this process gets some good news and exchanges soon. There seem to be such long periods of no communication sometimes and it's so infuriating!